Kan’s Dilemma: Public Funds for North Korean Schools?

North Korea’s latest military attack is likely to make even more difficult a tough decision facing Prime Minister Kan by year’s end — whether to extend tax breaks and subsidies to Pyongyang-friendly schools. The debate underscores the difficulties Tokyo has in dealing with its large North Korean population, a growing problem as the hermit country becomes more belligerent and more isolated.

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Huge plumes of smoke rising from Yeonpyeong island in the disputed waters of the Yellow Sea on Nov. 23. North Korea fired dozens of artillery shells onto a South Korean island Tuesday afternoon, killing two people, setting homes ablaze and triggering an exchange of fire as the South’s military went on top alert.

The question arose this year as an unintended consequence of an early popular policy of Mr. Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan, enacted at the start of the Japanese school year on April 1. That exempts Japanese public senior high school students from tuition, while private educational institutions receive an annual subsidy of up to 237,600 yen per student.

The government program, one of the main policy initiatives introduced by the newly-elected center-left government after taking power about a year ago, faced controversy early on over whether it should be extended to North Korean schools. There are 78 pro-North Korean schools nationwide, of which 10 senior high schools are seeking financial assistance, according to the education ministry.

In March, a United Nations panel pressed the DPJ-led government to include the schools, warning the ruling party of the program’s discriminatory implications should they be left out.

Hiroshi Nakai, minister in charge of the issue of North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens, has been a particularly vocal opponent of the move to include the schools in light of the kidnappings. At an event in late April the minister said the students at the schools are brainwashed in classes on “juche”, a North Korean philosophy based on self-reliance and military-first ideas, according to Kyodo news. The government has been critical of the North Korean schools in the past for ties to the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chongryon, also considered the de-facto North Korean embassy. The association has come under scrutiny for its relationship to the hermit country. Japan does not have any diplomatic relations with North Korea.

Since May, the education ministry’s panel reviewed the schools’ curriculum, content and student life, and other factors to determine if the schools are comparable to Japanese educational standards. Education ministry officials requested documents detailing the school’s curriculum and visited all of the schools under review to video tape classes and extracurricular activities.

The schools have been busy making their case to the government. Students traveled from as far away as Fukuoka, a city on the southern island of Kyushu, to submit petitions with about 40,000 signatures in support of the extending the tuition-free program, said Chang Hung Lee, the former director of the education bureau overseeing North Korean schools in Tokyo. Meanwhile, Tokyo-based students conducted their own grassroots campaign over summer break, standing at train stations everyday to collect signatures and local support, Mr. Lee told JRT.

“We understand the North Korean problem is a difficult one,” said Mr. Lee. “There are people that question why North Korean schools should receive funding, especially with the ongoing abduction issue.” But Mr. Lee argues that one of the challenges for the schools has been to show there are few differences between the pro-Pyongyang school and Japanese ones. The biggest difference is that all classes are taught in Korean. To be sure, there are minor curriculum differences as well. The schools only have three to four hours of Japanese language classes per week whereas Japanese school schedule include about five hours, said Mr. Lee. History textbooks used in the North Korean schools also vary from the Japanese ones, such as in the way it covers Japan’s annexation of Korea a century ago.

“Of course they [the textbooks] will be different because the thinking is different,” said Mr. Lee, who adds North Korea is largely ignored in Japan’s textbooks covering its colonization of Korea. The Korean students in Japan are descendants of Korean who were forcibly taken or moved to Japan during the country’s 35-year colonial rule that ended in 1945.

A panel of experts, established by the Ministry of Education to study the eligibility issue, submitted in late August a report that presented the guidelines that should be used to judge the schools. In the report, the panel recognized that eligible schools should have educational curricula comparable with those of standard Japanese high schools, but avoided establishing specific requirements for the content of education.

Families of North Korean abductees and the right-leaning Liberal Democratic Party of Japan opposed the education ministry’s decision earlier this month not to factor in the schools’ curricula into determining whether they meet eligibility requirements. The largest opposition party and the families of the abductees argued the textbooks used by the schools were skewed in its historical accuracy and risked teaching the younger generations incorrect information.

Shigeo Iizuka, whose younger sister was abducted by the North, told the education minister that it might send a ”wrong message” to Pyongyang if the government approves the subsidies to the North Korean-affiliated schools, according to Kyodo news.

And that was before Tuesday’s shelling. With his public support sinking fast, Mr. Kan may find it even tougher over the next month to win acceptance for subsidies for the North Korean schools.

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